Discusses the assessment of children's early language comprehension by the use of (1) parent reports; (2) preferential-looking models; and (3) event-related brain potentials. Examines recent findings on dissociations between language comprehension and production in normal, late-talking, and brain-injured children and considers the implications of…

Grammatical development was examined for 10 children (ages 19 to 31 months) with expressive language impairments only and 10 children with both receptive- and expressive-language impairments. Group analyses did not reveal any differences between the subtypes on the Index of Productive Syntax. However, specific weakness in verb-phrase elaboration…

Language characteristics of 11 children (ages 6-8) with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 11 typically developing children were compared for semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic language skills. Findings indicated no differences on receptive vocabulary, but children with ADHD performed worse on tests of expressive speech and…

This article reviews the efficacy of cochlear implantation in children with prelingual deafness. A brief introduction to cochlear implants is provided, followed by a review of research regarding the positive effects of cochlear implantation on speech perception, speech production, and language development. Implications for early childhood…

This study used a performance-based model to investigate the impact of discourse demands on the pattern of morphosyntactic deficits exhibited by 10 children with specific language impairments (SLI). Findings suggest distinct deficit profiles for subgroups of children with SLI differing in receptive language abilities, not evident when syntactic…

A study examined developmental changes in talker recognition skills by assessing 72 children's (ages 3-5) recognition of 20 cartoon characters' voices. Four- and 5-year-old children recognized more of the voices than did 3-year-olds. All children were more accurate at recognizing more familiar characters than less familiar characters. (Contains…

Although shy children speak less in social situations, the extent to which their language skills fall behind those of their more outgoing peers remains unclear. We selected 22 temperamentally shy and 22 non-shy children from a larger group of 400 4-year-old children who were prescreened for temperamental shyness by maternal report, using the…

The Teacher Behavior Rating Scale (C. H. Hart & C. C. Robinson, 1996) was used to compare the withdrawn and sociable behaviors of 41 children with specific language impairment (SLI) and 41 typically developing peers. Three subtypes of withdrawal (reticence, solitary-active, solitary-passive) and 2 subtypes of sociable behavior (prosocial, impulse…

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) frequently experience difficulties with understanding vocabulary and are subsequently academically disadvantaged. This study describes a curriculum-based assessment and therapy technique and its implementation with two children with language difficulties. Mathematical vocabulary that the children…

Four experiments investigated activation of semantic information in action preparation. Participants either prepared to grasp and use an object (e.g., to drink from a cup) or to lift a finger in association with the object's position following a go/no-go lexical-decision task. Word stimuli were consistent to the action goals of the object use…

Predictors of productive and receptive language development in 39 children with intellectual disabilities (17 with Down syndrome) and their parents were identified. Children were in the prelinguistic or first stage of productive language acquisition (Brown, 1973). The Down syndrome and non-Down syndrome groups were matched on several variables,…

Purpose: This study assessed the fast mapping performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI) across the preschool to kindergarten age span in relation to their phonological memory and vocabulary development. Method: Fifty-three children diagnosed with SLI and 53 children with normal language (NL) matched for age and gender (30…

This study examined the composition of vocabulary and preschoolers' vocabulary learning in an early literacy program. Fifty-six children with typical achievement, with special needs, and at risk for disabilities participated. Curriculum-based measures (CBM) were used to track children's receptive and expressive vocabulary growth over three…

Oral language skills in the preschool years are predictive of children's later reading success and literacy acquisition, and among these language skills, vocabulary and narrative ability play important roles. Children from low socioeconomic families face risks to their language development and because of threats to these skills it is important to…

This paper reports an assessment of the collocational competence of students of English Linguistics at the University of Granada. This was carried out to meet a two-fold purpose. On the one hand, we aimed to establish a solid corpus-driven approach based upon a systematic and reliable framework for the evaluation of collocational competence in…